Flambards is a large, decaying house in the Essex countryside and Christina Parsons is the young girl who comes to live there in the quiet, menacing days before the First World War. The house is ruled from a wheelchair by her tyrannical Uncle Russell, in whose shadow live his two sons: Mark, who shares his father?s obsession for hunting and drinking, and William, who has a different but even more dangerous obsession - flying. Christina finds herself in the midst of a rapidly changing world of air displays and flights to France, servants who know their place and some who don?t and above all, under the pressure of war, has to grow up and assume responsibility that would have frightened the young girl who first arrived at the big house. Though the action ranges high, wide and handsome, it is Flambards that remains the heart-beat of the story - and there Christina returns where she marries the man of her choice. Here, as in most other things, she goes her own way - a smiling survivor and an emancipated woman. David Fanshawe has written the witty, perceptive and versatile score to match, reflecting an age when tunes were the fashion. ALAN PLATER